This invention proposes the structures and uses of various styles of combined electrical and acoustic sensors for variously gathering, in a related system, skin-contact anatomical ECG electrical and heart-sound data. This system is referred to herein as a patient-portable, heart-condition monitoring and reporting system. The invention also proposes a unique common-time-based graphical manner of displaying relevant, interrelated ECG and heart-sound data in a highly intuitive way for reading and understanding by medical personnel. The invention thus offers improvements in the field of heart-condition evaluation wherein there is a continuum of activity seeking to make more robust and accurate the extensively growing field of medical assessment of the healths of people's hearts. It especially enhances the utility and confidence of using carefully gathered simultaneous ECG-electrical and heart-sound-audio data in the quest for improved heart-behavior assessment.
The system proposed and offered by the invention features a sensor device and associated circuitry which is/are small, highly portable, and user-wearable (as for use in a “home heart-condition” monitoring and reporting practice). In accordance with the invention, a small, singular (or plural if desired) sensor device(s) is(are) designed to capture heart sounds from a selected region or site on the anatomy, along with plural ECG electrical signals (plurals leads) which signals are collected from closely adjacent electrically and physically spaced surface-skin regions that are symmetrically located relative to where heart sounds are gathered. Plural electrodes provided for electrical signal gathering are preferably symmetrically disposed with respect to a central “collection axis” along which a sound transducer, or transducers, (of various selectable types) in the sensor picks up heart-sound signals, such as the S1, S2, S3 and S4 heart-sound signals.
The apparatus of the invention is extremely small, and, as is suggested above, is intended to be useable as a portable home-monitoring unit if so desired, preferably with onboard signal-processing circuitry that processes gathered ECG-electrical and heart-sound-audio signals in a manner preparatory for the creation of an output data stream or signal, which is effective/constructed to create a unique and very intuitive combined-information display. This output data stream may either be coupled locally to an appropriate display device, or it may be prepared for transmission, as over the Internet, to a remote site for display and review purposes.
The display which results from the created output data stream is a highly intuitive display which includes, on a common time base, (a) a track presenting an ECG vector (terminology known in the art) which is derived directly from ECG signals to represent a person's heart electrical activities, with selected fiducials, such as the onset of the Q wave, clearly marked in relation to this vector, (b) a track which displays the directly detected heart-sound audio signals, and then, (c) on the upper and lower (positive and negative) sides of what is referred to herein as a neutral time-base axis, or line, upwardly and downwardly extending vertical graphical excursions, also referred to herein as intuitive heart-sound surrogates, which indicate the locations of the four above-identified heart sounds if and when detected. Excursions marking heart sounds which depart upwardly from the neutral axis line are those which are relatable directly to systolic heart behavior, and those which project downwardly from the neutral axis line related directly to diastolic behavior.
This very intuitive heart-sound detection display quickly enables a viewer to assess the information presented in the display with respect to the associated heart's health and condition. Additionally, heart-sound marking excursions pictured relative to the mentioned neutral axis line may take the form of rectangular, darkened, pulse-like, rectangular blocks who's heights and widths may be calibrated to describe frequency content and other characteristics of detected heart sounds. Such pulse-like blocks are also highly intuitive in nature with respect to their quick information-giving capabilities.
These and other features and advantages which are offered by the invention will become more fully apparent as the description which now follows is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.